


Progress

by CynicalRainbows



Category: Carrie - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Families of Choice, Fix-It, Friendship, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Recovery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:13:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24878251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CynicalRainbows/pseuds/CynicalRainbows
Summary: Sue tries to make amends.A fix-it fic of sorts, in which Carrie ends up being taken in by Miss Desjardin after the pigs bood incident, rather than going on a murderous rampage.
Relationships: Susan Snell & Carrie White
Comments: 24
Kudos: 39





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is such a stupid fic, I honestly don't even know why i'm writing it, other than that I'm so soft for happy endings and family-of-choice.
> 
> If anyone is curious about why I chose this sort of ending, the 2002 remake of Carrie will explain it. It features an incredibly warm lovely Miss Desjardin, who is implied to sympathise with Carrie because of her own bad high school experience (she gives her the sweetest pep talk at Prom about how everything will be better after graduation and how at the ten year reunion, the mean girls will have peaked and flunked while Carrie will be just fine) and a much nicer Sue, who helps Carrie escape after Prom and drives her to Florida. It also features amusingly terribly special effects and a pleasantly socially-awkward messy-haired Carrie, played by Angela Bettis.

She hovers outside the door for a moment because she isn’t sure whether or not to knock. Even knocking feels inappropriate right now- it implies normality when really, Sue knows, there is nothing normal about this situation.

‘Go ahead. You can knock. She knows you’re here already.’ Miss Desjardin’s voice behind her makes her jump- it isn’t exactly frosty but it isn’t warm either. ‘Go on.’

Sue taps once, lightly.

‘Come in.’ The voice is very quiet and it sounds more resigned than welcoming. Again, she hesitates.

‘Go on. You’re here now.’ 

Yes, Sue is here now- but by circumstance, it feels like, more than by choice. What had begun as a whisper-  _ What’s happened to Carrie, where is she, where did she go after….? _ \- turned into rumour and gossip.  _ ‘I heard she killed herself, I heard she was expelled, I heard Chris and Billy had the police go to their houses’.  _ The fact that the last one has turned out to be true only added fuel to the fire.  _ ‘I heard she ran away from home, I heard her crazy mother killed them both, did you see the house is boarded up?, I heard she killed herself, I heard she slit her wrists, I heard, I heard-’ _

And then, quite unexpectedly, Tommy turning up at her house. Not  _ I heard _ but  _ I saw. _

‘Sue, I saw Carrie. At least, I think I did-’

He hadn’t sounded too sure but Sue, desperate for news, for hope, had almost shaken every detail out of him.  _ When? Where? For certain? No, of course not for certain, of course not, but- really? _

And then  _ ‘Miss Desjardin? Really?’ _

That had been the part of the story that she’d been able to discount right away- it wasn’t like there weren’t other slightly-built dark haired women with a penchant for ponytails and sportswear in the town.

And yet- hovering on the doorstep, ringing the bell, rehearsing the speech she’d prepared in her head,  _ I’m so sorry to both you but do you know a Carrie White?,  _ the door had opened and she’d found herself staring at her gym teacher (an ex gym teacher is still a gym teacher after all) in stunned surprise.

‘What do you want?’

‘Miss Desjardin?’

‘Yes.’

She had offered no explanation and Sue had stammered over her apology. 

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know you- I just- Someone said-’

‘Yes?’ She’d looked impatient.

‘Tommy said he saw Carrie here- through a window. He must’ve been mistaken but I wanted to see if it was true.’

‘Why?’

The cold, hard steady gaze had made her squirm internally.

‘To say-’  _ Sorry  _ had felt such a pitiful, inadequate word, and she had been so distracted by it that it had taken her a moment to realise the implication. ‘Wait- she’s  _ here?’ _

Miss Desjardin had sighed and opened the door wider. ‘You’d best come in.’

*

The talk that followed- although Sue mostly listened- was lengthy and intense and full of severe threats as to the sort of painful retribution that would surely follow if Sue did or said anything to ‘hurt’ Carrie, including making any references at all to her mother's death or talking about the encounter to anyone, including Tommy.

The talk had been so censorious that Sue had been half sure that once it was over, she would find herself returned to the doorstep without seeing Carrier at all… but instead, she’d found herself returned to the hallway to wait while Miss Desjardin went upstairs to let Carrie know Sue had arrived.

‘If she doesn’t want to see you, you’ll have to go. I won’t make her talk to you if she doesn’t want to.’

‘I know.’

‘She’s very….fragile, right now.’

‘I know.’

She’d hoped that the agreement would be placating but instead Miss Desjardin had just glared at her. ‘She’s been through a lot. More than you know.’

Sue nodded. She didn’t know- but she felt like she was beginning to guess.

*

The room is plain and impersonal- like guest bedrooms are- and the only thing that marks it out as belonging to Carrie at all is the presence of the girl, who is perched stiffly on the edge of the bed.

She doesn’t look at Sue but that’s not surprising: in fact, Carrie looks just the same as she’s always looked, hunched over on the school benches, eyes on her shoes, making herself as small as possible.

Sue wonders if it’s her presence that has invoked this, or if Carrie sits the same wherever she happens to be. She rather hopes it’s the latter.

‘Hi.’

Silence.

‘I hope you don’t mind. That I came to see you. I just- Tommy-’ She pauses. She isn’t sure if referring to Tommy counts as one of the off limits conversation topics Miss Desjardin had alluded to downstairs- she decides she might as well finish. ‘He thought he saw you and I wanted- we both wanted- to see how you were….’

She can’t tell if Carrie really does twitch at her mention of Tommy’s name or if it’s just coincidence or her imagination or what.

‘Not that everyone is- like, talking about it or anything-’ she hastens to add. She deliberately does not mention what everyone IS talking about ‘And I won’t tell anyone- not that I would but Miss Desjardin- she-’ She finds herself trailing off again. Talking to someone who doesn’t even look at you is so  _ difficult. _

She twists her fingers nervously, trying to find something else to say and failing miserably.

‘Rita.’

Carrie’s voice is very, very quiet, almost a whisper.

‘What?’

‘She said I could call her Rita. But I can’t.’ Carrie hasn’t raised her head. 

‘It must be difficult.’

‘It’s alright.’ 

Sue wishes she could lean forward to get more of a view of Carrie’s hidden face- is it twisted in anguish? Is she relishing the chance to make Sue uncomfortable? Or is she as blank faced as Sue remembers her- impervious and unreacting to everything until she…..wasn’t. 

‘She made them give me pills.’

This throws Sue off a bit. Is Carrie going to reveal their teacher to be some sort of drug-pushing student abducting hustler- and if she does, what on earth is Sue meant to do about it?

‘W-what?’

‘In the hospital.’ Carrie is talking not as if she expects Sue to keep up but as if she doesn’t care very much either way. ‘When they put in the stitches. She could tell it hurt. They said I wouldn’t feel anything because I couldn’t talk. But she made them.’

There’s a tiny note of something- pride?- in Carrie’s voice that Sue knows she hasn’t heard before. Pride that someone cared enough to make sure she was given basic anaesthetic? It disturbs her that she finds this easy to believe.

‘That’s-’ She wants to say something bland and conciliatory but the  _ nice  _ she intends to say sticks in her throat. Instead she says ‘Why were you in hospital?’

Carrie doesn’t respond but her hand raises enough to cover the raised square of what Sue realises must be a dressing on her right shoulder.

She glances around the room for something- anything- else to say. ‘Tommy could- come help with that.’ She nods to the closet door, off its hinges and leaning against the wall.

Carrie raises her head for the first time, looking at Sue uncomprehendingly. ‘With what?’

‘The- the door. He could put it back on if you-’

A very faint ghost of a smile plays on Carrie’s lips and Sue wonders what she’s said wrong.

‘What?’

‘She took it off on purpose.’

‘Why?’

‘So I can’t ever be shut inside. Even by mistake. Ever.’

‘Why would you-’ Then Sue understands what she means, or at least, she gets an idea of what Carrie means, understands too the sort of things that would happen to a person to make their mind go to this sort of place. ‘Oh Carrie. I’m sorry.’

‘Why?’

‘I didn’t know that Chris- I mean, I knew about some stuff but not that she, that they-’

‘It wasn’t Chris.’

‘Oh.’ She feels sickened. ‘Carrie, you should have-’ 

_ Told someone. _ The words die on her lips as Carrie looks at her straight in the eye.

‘I’m sorry.’ She can feel herself starting to cry, even as she tries not to. ‘I’m sorry. Oh god Carrie I’m sorry, I’m so sorry- I- We did such awful things to you and- Oh god, I’m sorry-’ She chokes on her tears and Carrie watches. She doesn’t offer Sue a tissue and this also is not a surprise because, Sue thinks, when did she or anyone ever do that for Carrie? She and the others forced her to live in a world without compassion and now Carrie has none to spare for her.

But she knows even as she thinks it that it too is a disservice- it’s too grandiose, a little too perfect as a metaphor, the sort of thing her English teacher would underline and tick in a Creative Writing task.  _ Well Done. Good Use of Symbolism.  _

Really, she and everyone else treated Carrie White like shit, and she doesn’t deserve to see poetic justice in Carrie being less than moved by her own histrionics.

There’s a light tap on the door and Miss Desjardin opens the door, her expression set- although she does a double take when she registers that it’s Sue in tears. She obviously was expecting something different.

‘Is everything alright?’

They both nod.

Despite the assurance, Miss Desjardin still eyes Sue suspiciously, while laying a protective hand on Carrie’s shoulder. She doesn’t flinch, Sue notices- she almost seems to lean into the touch.

‘Ok?’

Carrie nods again and Miss Desjardin reluctantly absents herself.

‘She said I didn’t have to see you.’

Sue dries her face on her sleeve and gets control of herself. ‘Why?’

She means  _ Why did you?  _ not  _ Why wouldn’t you want to see me? _ but Carrie obviously takes her to mean the latter.

‘I don’t like thinking about it. Or about anything. I still do but-’ Carrie glances back down quickly. ‘I dream about it sometimes.’

‘About-’

‘The blood. The smell of it. And- about that day. In the showers. About lots of things.’ Carrie’s voice is even quieter now and Sue has to stay very still to make out her words, then wishes she hadn’t. ‘I dream about- about the moment it hit me. I could taste it. Have you- ever tasted blood?’

Sue shakes her head.

‘It made me sick. It still makes me sick, if I think I taste it, even if I know I’m dreaming-’ She pauses. ‘Miss Desjardin never even gets angry.’

‘She doesn’t?’

‘She does but- not at me.’ Carrie raises her head again. ‘I can tell even when she doesn’t say. I can feel her shaking when she’s helping me clean up and I know it’s because she’s angry.’

‘With- with me?’ 

‘With everyone.’

It’s nothing more than Sue deserves, she knows it- and she’s glad too, to hear that Carrie seems to have found herself the most unexpected of allies- but it also makes her realise the magnitude of everything.

How can she possibly hope to make up for it? How can she make up for anything? It’s hopeless, it’s futile, it’s stupid to even imagine that she could, that her presence could so anything other than hurt. 

She should leave, she knows she should- but just as she makes up her mind to do so, Carrie shifts slightly on the bed.

‘You can sit down if you want.’

It’s the flimsiest of invitations but it also means everything. 

So she does.


	2. Chapter 2

She comes back again and gets another lecture on a similar theme as before:  _ Don’t upset her, don’t hurt her. If you hurt her, I will end you. She is fragile, she is still healing _ . This time though, there is surprise as well as hostility in Miss Desjardin’s eyes when she answers the door, like she wasn’t expecting to see Sue again.

_ ‘ _ Hi Miss Desjardin.’

‘Come in.’

This time, Carrie tells her she can sit down almost right away, and it feels like progress but it’s more uncomfortable now too: the apologies, at least enough apologies for now, have been made, and the deep awful things have been put to rest- for the moment- which means that now, they’re simply two girls sitting side by side on a guest room bed trying to find things to say to one another.

It’s not easy, it’s not fun, it’s nothing at all close to the easy flow of conversation she has with her other friends, with Harriet and Sarah and Chris. That she had with Chris. 

She hasn’t spoken to the girl since before  _ that night _ and honestly, she doesn’t really want to. She isn’t even sure where she is, although there have been rumours about a custodial sentence. Anything they had in common was washed away in a tide of semi rancid pigs blood and now all she wants to do is fight as hard as she can to crush any lingering likeness well and truly out of herself.

Chris would have left- hell, Chris wouldn’t have ever come, not in a million years, not even if it was someone other than Carrie. She might have come for Sue, once, but Sue knows that there’s no way Chris would have chosen to endure more than one of the uncomfortable stilted conversations of the sort she’s having with Carrie now by choice.

Chris would have left, so Sue comes. She has to. 

And it isn’t easy. Talking to Carrie has never been easy, full stop- she stammers and stumbles, she ducks her head, talks to your shoes rather than to your face. She misunderstands, gets the confused, timid look as if everything is an attempt to trick her or trap her, so pathetic that it makes you want to pinch her, poke her, shove her, do anything at all in fact, anything if it makes her angry, anything to stop her looking so weak.

But she is weak. As Miss Desjardin keeps reminding her, she’s fragile- she’s hurt, and with every cringing sideways glance, Sue feels hot prickles of shame.

The shame isn’t pleasant but it’s better than the outright fear she feels during her second week of visits. She’d had such good intentions too: stopping by the food market for lunch that Saturday, she’d felt a pang for Carrie. She knew that Miss Desjardin favoured health foods- she could still remember the absolute fit the woman had had when Helen had snuck a tube of Rolos into the pocket of her gym clothes to help the hour of playing midfielder go by a little more easily- and even without that, she somehow couldn’t picture Carrie venturing into the crowded cacophony of smells and colours easily.

It had been, she had thought at the time, a nice surprise- a friendly gesture, to bring a small treat to a shut-in. Not enough to make up for anything but….a start. Proof of her intent to do better.

When she’d taken the moist paper bag of now lukewarm dumplings out of her bag, Carrie had eyed them anxiously…..but that was how she looked at most things, Sue rationalised.

‘Try one.’

Carrie reached out a timid hand and then pulled it back. ‘It’s ok, they- they’re yours.’

‘I got them for you, take one!’

‘But you might want to keep them-’

Sue shook her head, only a touch impatiently.

‘I said, I got them for you-’

Carrie reluctantly took the bun and Sue was so caught up in thinking about how much she would enjoy it, about what a wonderful treat it would be after the salads and smoothies and various forms of kale that she was doubtlessly subsisting on that she didn’t even notice anything was wrong until Carrie froze halfway through chewing her first mouthful.

‘Carrie?’

She doesn’t move, but her eyes bulge and a sheen of sweat glistens at her hairline.

‘Carrie?’

After a second, Carrie bolts from the room. She hears the bathroom door bang open, and the sound of throwing up, and she’s just about to run to tell Miss Desjardin that something is  _ wrong _ when her former teacher hurries towards her, taking the stairs two at a time and throwing a terse ‘Downstairs’ at Sue as she passes her.

Sue hovers uncertainly in the hall, mounts the stairs, loses her nerve, returns and then goes back.

She can’t hear much, the faint cadence of Miss Desjardin’s voice, a tap turning on and off.

After a long while, a very pale Carrie is helped down the hall and back to her own room, Miss Desjardin’s arm around her tightly, holding her up. She’s not throwing up anymore but she’s shaking violently and tears are leaking from the corners of her eyes. It reminds Sue of That Day in the showers, and she wonders what on earth has triggered such a reaction.

She edges closer, holding her breath: she can make out more now, the creak of bedsprings, the rattle as the curtains are pulled.

‘-all ok now, I promise. It’s all over, everything is ok-’ Miss Desjardin’s voice is so very soft, so gentle, it’s hard to believe she’s the same woman who’s bellow across the lacrosse field makes even girls like Chris flinch, who has made more than one student throw up during suicides.

‘-can taste it, I can taste it, I can still taste it-’ Carrie’s voice is a breathless frantic whimper that becomes muffled after a moment. Peeking through the crack in the door, Sue sees Miss Desjardin moving to the bed, pulling Carrie securely into her arms, her face buried in her neck, before gently detaching her and handing her a glass of water.

‘Small sips, ok?’

Carrie obediently takes the glass but flinches before every sip, as if she’s afraid of the water turning to something else.

‘I don’t want it, I don’t want to-’ 

‘I know honey, but you’ll get dehydrated if you don’t drink. It’s just water, I promise. Nothing else.’

What does she think it is, Sue wonders- and then as Carrie whimpers again that she can taste it, that she can still smell it, she realises. Blood. Of course it’s blood.

There’d been meat in the dumpling too, she realises and she feels sick with herself, at her own thoughtless arrogance.

_ Oh Carrie, I’m sorry, I never meant it, I didn’t- _

Another apology, like all the others too little and too late.

‘Another sip….There we are, well done-’

The water is set down at last and Carrie leans limply against Miss Desjardin’s shoulder, still teary.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s alright honey, it’s not your fault-’

‘I didn’t mean to-’

‘I know. Here.’

A roll of extra strong mints are taken from the bedside table and Carrie accepts one gratefully, pops it into her mouth.

‘Thank you.’ They sit in silence for a moment and then Carrie sits up in weary consternation. ‘Sue-

‘Sue will understand honey, I promise.’ The words are so tender, so reassuring, but Sue can hear the steely certainty behind them: ‘ _ And if she doesn’t, then I will make her _ ’. 

It’s a little scary but also oddly reassuring at the same time- Carrie needs someone to be steely on her behalf, Sue knows. Although she’s also a little afraid at what punishment will be her lot for triggering such a reaction.

_ She can’t still make me run suicides, she can’t make me do anything, can she? Can she? _

But she could and Sue knew it.

‘How about you have some quiet time up here while I talk to Sue?’

Carrie nods: pillows are arranged, and Miss Desjardin helps her to lie down.

‘You’ll feel better soon. Try to keep drinking, ok?’

She nods again, albeit more reluctantly and Miss Desjardin kisses the top of her head.

‘Good girl. I’ll be just downstairs if you need me, ok?’

‘Ok. Can- can you tell Sue I’m sorry?’

There’s a pause, and Sue can tell Miss Desjardin is battling conflicting impulses: wanting to do anything she can for this fragile, frail, hurting girl in front of her and wanting to insist that Carrie has nothing to apologise for.

After a moment she nods. ‘Yes. Alright. Now get some rest, ok?’

‘Ok.’

There’s a rustling as Carrie pulls something out from under her pillow- Sue thinks for a moment it’s a blanket but then she realises it’s a big sweatshirt with a hood. She doesn’t put it on- she clutches in her arms and buries her face into the fabric, her breathing slowing down as she does.

Sue is so distracted by watching that she forgets she’s meant to be downstairs- the look Miss Desjardin gives her when she steps into the hall makes her want to run away, but she doesn’t say anything, just walks briskly downstairs and into the kitchen, Sue trailing behind her anxiously.

She doesn’t talk until the door is closed and her voice is icy.

‘I told you to wait downstairs.’

Sue gulps.

‘I know. I’m sorry.’ 

She waits for a storm to break upon her head but instead Miss Desjardin turns abruptly and puts the kettle on.

‘Sit down.’

She does.

Miss Desjardin makes two cups of green tea in silence, puts one in front of Sue and then takes one for herself.

The silence puts Sue on edge until she can’t bear it, and she breaks it at the exact same moment that Miss Desjardin too makes up her mind to speak.

‘I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean to-’

‘You didn’t do anything wrong.’

They both pause for a moment, and Sue shuts up.

Miss Desjardin takes a breath.

‘It wasn’t your fault.’

‘I- I thought she’d…’ Her voice trails off. ‘I thought she’d like them-’

‘What was it, out of interest?’

Sue hands over the bag, tremblingly and Miss Desjardin looks inside, then gives a half smile.

‘Mmmm they smell heavenly. Do you mind?’

Sue shakes her head, and Miss Desjardin takes a blissful bite.

‘Thank you. I think it was probably the pork in them. She has….trouble with meat now.’

‘Because of the-’

‘Yes. We’re working on it.’ The nod is curt, the words almost fierce, as if daring Sue to disagree. ‘Some foods are harder than others but… it takes time.’

‘I didn’t mean to- I mean, I didn’t know-’

‘Of course you didn’t, how could you?’ Sue shakes her head mutely and Miss Desjardin smiles. ‘Trust me, if I thought it was in any way deliberate, I’d have thrown you out of the house there and then. Possibly through a window.’

Sue does not doubt her.

‘It was kind of you to bring them though.’

It feels distinctly odd being praised like this and she isn’t sure how to respond; she ducks her head, embarrassed. 

‘I’d like to ask you a favour. You don’t have to, of course, but I would….appreciate it, if you could.’

She wonders what on earth she’s going to be asked and hopes it’s nothing painful.

‘Would you mind staying so that Carrie can say goodbye to you before you leave please? You needn’t stay long, just another twenty minutes or so, if you have things to do. It’s just-’ For the first time, Miss Desjardin actually looks slightly uncomfortable. ‘She’s going to torture herself, thinking you’re upset with her otherwise, she takes things very hard…’

Sue nods slightly. ‘I’m not upset with her, I’d never have brought them if I’d-’

‘Yes. But she doesn’t know that.’ 

‘I’ll stay.’ She doesn’t think she could live with herself if she left.

‘Thank you.’

Sue waits in the hallway while Miss Desjardin goes into Carrie’s room, listens to the murmur of conversation.

‘How are you feeling now honey? …..Yes. Sue is still here, you know…. No, of course she isn’t angry with you-’

She goes in, gives what she hopes is a reassuring and apologetic goodbye and a convincing excuse about needing to go home to Carrie, who eyes her warily from under the safety of Miss Desjardin’s arm, leaves the house at a measured pace, and then runs all the way home and throws up in a bush.

Her mouth tastes like bile and guilt; she can still see Carrie’s anxious, scared expression in her mind's eye, so sure of being blamed and reviled. And her terrified cries: ‘I can taste it, I can still taste it….’

_ You made her like this, you did this. You and your friends, you and people you considered good and fun and even kind did this to her. _

Because even Chris could be kind, to the right people and Sue has been on the receiving end of it more than once. She remembers Chris offering her her jacket to tie round her waist when she came on unexpectedly during a double date in an act of unexpected and unprecedented mercy.  _ If you get blood on it, you have to pay to get it dry cleaned, bitch _ . The thought makes her want to throw up again.

So she makes an effort.

She comes back- and although she still brings snacks, they’re of the most innocuous kind, always sweet things- paper bags of hard candies and chocolate with a purple wrapper and bags of yoghurt-covered raisins. She doesn’t push Carrie to try them and sometimes they go uneaten entirely but not often.

That feels like progress.

She talks and she waits- sits through the interminable pauses as Carrie gropes for a response, because she is trying too, she can tell, doing her best to hold her side of the conversation, to talk about the sort of things that she thinks Sue might be interested in.

She even asks after Tommy, and Sue is glad she can be mostly honest: Yes, they’re still together, yes, he’s recovering just fine.

‘He hopes you’re ok. He asked how you were.’ 

And Carrie smiles.

‘He was nice to me. I’m glad he’s ok. I’m sorry….if he’d just taken you….’

She doesn’t say any more and neither does Sue, but the sincerity in her voice is unmistakable.

She even endures the terrible clumsy bluntness that reminds her why she never talked to Carrie much at school beforehand.

Most people have a filter- Carrie seems to alternate between close-lipped guardedness and just  _ saying  _ things. The worst part is that what she says is nearly always  _ true. _

‘ _ Thank you for coming. I know you don’t have to.’ _

_ ‘That’s ok.’ _

_ ‘I know it’s only because you feel sorry for me but it’s still nice to have someone to talk to.’ _

_ ‘I don’t feel sorry for you.’ _

_ The words stick in her throat: it’s like a sick conversational ritual that she and Carrie are doomed to repeat again and again even though neither of them want to. _

_ ‘Of course you do. I feel sorry for me. Like when I think about it- like it’s not me I’m thinking about but someone else. I think off all the things that have ever happened to me my whole life and imagine it’s happening to some other girl.’ Carrie gives a sad smile. ‘I feel so sorry for her that it hurts. And then it makes me wonder if there’s something wrong me with.’ _

_ ‘There’s nothing wrong with you-’ Again, the thick, choking lie. _

_ ‘No, I mean like… there must be. Because no one else felt sorry for me and I was a real actual person. Or….they did feel sorry for me but not sorry enough that it made any difference.’ She shrugs. ‘So it’s worse than useless.’ There’s a little pause. ‘Can we look at the magazines now?’ _

_ Sue has the slightly dazed feeling that she always gets from the whiplash fast mood change but she pulls out the magazines from her shoulder bag anyway. ‘Yeah sure. These ones are the new ones, these are the old copies. They’re a few months out of date.’ _

_ ‘That’s ok.’ Carrie smiles as she brushes a finger over the models glossy smiling face. ‘All of me is out of date.’ _

The magazines are a lifeline of sorts- it gives them a distraction, it gives them something to talk about. The glossy printed pages form the flimiest of bridges between them, a frail papery island of common ground. 

Sue decides she’ll take it- and slowly, things get easier. She starts bringing over her bag of makeup- first just with the intention of a one-time makeover but the one-time becomes every time. 

Carrie handles the sticks and tubes and tiny brushes carefully, reverently, casting Sue little anxious glances as she does so, checking it’s all ok and waiting every time for Sue’s encouraging smile and nod of encouragement.

They go from makeovers to actual lessons- Sue starts to show Carrie how to apply the lipstick, the foundation, the eyeshadow to her own face and feels a flush of pride as Carrie’s hands become steadier, her movements less hesitant and more sure.

One day, she holds up and mirror- her own, familiar face and Carrie’s beside her, painstakingly made up by her own hand. For a moment, she could be any teenage girl, before Sue blinks and her features slide back into the familiar old Praying Carrie.

‘Look!’

‘Is that really me?’

‘I couldn’t have better myself.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Maybe you can make me up next time?’

A shy smile. ‘I’d like that.’

Although not exactly the same though, she has to admit. There’s something new in Carrie’s face that has nothing to do with makeup- the smile comes more easily now, her jaw clenches less tightly, her eyes are less anxious. She’s less pale too, thanks to Miss Desjardin’s unshakable faith in the healing powers of fresh air.

(‘She’s teaching me to swim. She knows someone who has a swimming pool and she’s teaching me.’

‘Why?’

A shrug. ‘She says it’ll be good for me. She says exercise will make me feel better.’

‘A gym teacher through and through, huh?’

‘Yeah.’ 

Sue expects to feel sorrier for Carrie, the most unathletic of the girls by far, being forced to reside with a woman who runs up stairs rather than walking, who looks upon a dislike of sports as a personal failing...but she doesn’t actually seem too unhappy about it. She doesn’t seem too unhappy, full stop. She’s still hesitant, still quietly spoken but….less tense, Sue realises, less afraid. She’s calmer, and she wonders how much of that is down to Miss Desjardin- to the soft side of her that she catches these little glimpses of.

Quite a lot, she suspects.

(Sue now knows that it’s her hoody under Carrie’s pillow, that she clutches at desperately when the panic engulfs her, that she still sometimes reaches out to touch, like a talisman, when her anxiety starts to spiral. That has to mean something.)

‘Do you like it?’

‘Maybe a little bit. More than volleyball or the stuff we did at school. I’m not letting anyone down by not being good at it.’

‘I didn’t know you couldn’t swim.’

‘Don’t you remember summer camp?’

Sue feels another flush of shame- they’re less frequent now but then one will catch her out like now- because of course, she does remember summer camp now that Carrie mentions it, she’d never actually joined in with ducking her but she’d laughed once or twice and then just stopped seeing. Carrie being ducked at summer camp had become an accepted part of the daily routine, along with bunk inspection and mandatory hikes and outdoor showers, but from the way Carrie speaks of it now, it’s like she’s referring to something horrific that has been seared into her memory. 

Sue feels as embarrassed as she did as a kid when she was scolded sharply for sitting on a war memorial like it was a picnic bench- no worse. She’d been just a kid then and war existed to her only in history books and grown up tv movies that always made her yawn and reach for the remote so she could switch to cartoons...but she had been an eyewitness to Carrie’s daily torture, and she doesn’t like to dwell too long on what it says about her that she managed to look into Carrie’s panicked, teary face as she gasped desperately for air and  _ forget _ it.

‘Oh. Yeah.’ She bites her lip but the clumsy, inadequate apology rushes out anyway. ‘I’m sorry, it was awful of us, I should have-’

‘Yeah.’ Carrie gives a half shrug and doesn’t meet her eye. ‘I know.’

‘Can you swim now?’

‘Sort of. Not well but- she says I’ll get better if i keep trying with it. She says once I can swim well enough to not drown, I can stop. If I want.’

‘Maybe she’ll make you do something worse though, like rock climbing or that weird thing where you hit a ball at a wall….what’s it called… Squish? Squash?…’ She’s musing out loud, she hadn’t really intended it to be funny but Carrie laughs and it’s a high, unexpectedly sweet sound.

‘I think it’s called squash.’

Sue thinks ‘I did that’ and rather than the shame that she’s grown used to and even almost made her peace with, she feels an unfamiliar glow. 

Pride.

(It’s progress.)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly, this is just a clumsy-as-hell attempt to fill in the gaps the first two chapters have left in terms of timeline.

One day, when things feel easier between them, Sue plucks up the courage to ask Carrie about That Night.

And surprisingly, Carrie tells her….

  
  
  


She blinks in the white-hot glare of the lights; Tommy’s hand is damp in her own.

She’s glowing, floating- she’s used to guarding every smile with caution, always wary of being the punchline to any and every joke, but now she lets herself smile openly, sincerely. 

(She doesn’t think she’s smiled this widely since she was a child. Or maybe not even then, there not being many things in her stifled, closed-window, tight-laced childhood to smile about. A daisy in the grass. A lollipop, palmed before Momma could refuse with her tight-lipped smile, at the dentists. Learning to tie her own shoes. No, there had not been much to smile about.)

And then the blood hits her, a warm, stinking wave of humiliation that drenches her hair and stings her eyes and goes up her nose and has her sputtering and coughing like it’s the first day of summer camp all over again and  _ let’s dunk Carrie, let’s dunk Carrie, praying Carrie who thought she could trick us all into forgetting what a freak she is just by wearing a Green Meadows Camp T-shirt (Size Large). _

The joke had been on her then as it is on her now, and, as she’s just realising, always will be.

She hadn’t been able to trick them with a cheap polyester t-shirt at age ten (or eleven or twelve) so why should she think she should be able to do it now, with a home-sewn dress and a wilting corsage at seventeen?

No wonder they called her stupid, always slow to catch on, always the last one to get the joke.

Seven years too late.

A thought rises to the surface of the confused chaos of her thoughts, like scum on the top of a pond:  _ Where did they get the blood? _

(She wonders if she’s been drenched in the collected uterus lining of the entire female half of the graduating class, and has to fight back a wave of nausea. Bitterness burns her throat.)

Then the bucket hits Tommy with a sickly dull thud that is somehow worse than any scream, and he crumples like a rag doll.

She feels a flush of guilty panic, through everything:  _ They’ll find a way to make this my fault. _

And then:  _ I hope Sue knows I didn’t mean it. _

And then, a queasy confused  _ Did Sue know? _

Anger begins to build, hot behind her eyes, throbbing at her temples, anger at herself, anger at them, anger at Momma for letting her go, anger at Tommy for asking her-

‘Carrie, come-’

And then Miss Desjardin is in front of her, and she looks so  _ sorry _ , so anguished like she might actually be about to cry but angry too… and it’s Miss Desjardin’s anger that brings her back to herself, for a moment, that turns the world upside down, or maybe the right way up, Carrie isn’t sure…. 

Things have been so up and down.

Stepping into the hall with her swishing, shimmering dress had twisted things, made her believe suddenly that maybe things weren’t set in stone, that maybe things could be different. 

The red circle around her that marked her out as different had suddenly seemed, under the golden glow of the fairy lights, changed: it was not non-existent (for Carrie knew it certainly existed, had been taught again and again with painful lesson after painful lesson), but it suddenly looked less inevitable and more incidental, the unfortunate result of bad luck and other people's bad choices, rather than something she deserved. 

Things had fallen as they had by chance or luck, but it had felt for the first time like perhaps- in another time, in another place, after graduation, in wherever she ended up that wasn’t Chamberlain, maybe things could be different. 

Maybe  _ she _ could be different: liked, included, even loved.

And then the blood had washed all that away, the red circle had reasserted itself as it always did, as it always would, and the sheer desolate hopelessness of Carrie’s return to her old understanding had been enough to make her skin burn with anger and her mind to Flex because of course, of course it’s always the same….

Miss Desjardin’s eyes though are horrified- Carrie searches them for any hint, any flicker of resignation, any hint that  _ they should have known all along it would go wrong _ , that this was just the ending that she should have expected.

To her surprise, she finds none.

Just a deep, deep sadness, almost as if she’s reproaching herself for not having prevented this somehow. Carrie could have been any other girl, unfairly, cruelly tricked, from how Miss Desjardin is looking at her, and all at once, the anger leaks away and she feels only a deep, crushing, numbing sadness for what had been, so far,  _ such _ a good night.

The blood trickles into her eyes and makes them sting; the faces of the crowd are blurred but the shocked, nervous laughter cuts like a razor blade.

She, thinks, distantly, that perhaps she should be crying but finds that she can’t. She can’t move, she can’t breathe, and she can’t even muster up the strength to care.

Perhaps this is what drowning feels like.

When Miss Desjardin takes her hand to lead her from the stage, she doesn’t have the energy to resist.

*

MIss Desjardin puts her own wrap around her shoulders because she’s shaking- but it doesn’t do very much. It’s a thin, flimsy thing, the sort of thing that pretty girls wear. 

And Carrie has never been a pretty girl.

‘Do you want to shower off sweetheart? I can try and find you something to change into-’

She shakes her head, spitting another mouthful of water into the sink, and then swishing and spitting again.

She can’t shower.

If she comes home with wet hair, Momma will know she’s been showing at school- a little voice at the back of her mind cuts through the sluggish shock to remind her that Momma already knows, that a few hours in the closet for showering is the least of her worries….but by the time it registers, she’s already being guided down the hall and she doesn’t have the energy to change her mind, to have to go all the way to the gym.

Honestly, she wants to be out of the place as quickly as possible, to leave them all and their dirty tricks and looks and games behind.

Leave them to their bloodsoaked mockery of a prom, leave them all to enjoy the smell and the mess of it. She hopes that some of them slip and break their stupid necks.

(Ok, maybe not all the anger is gone.)

Outside, Miss Desjardin ushers her into the passenger seat of her car; it reminds her of how she’d force her dolls into their tiny chairs as a child, manipulating unwieldy plastic arms and legs. 

(She only ever had girl dolls, never boys. They disappeared when she made the mistake of asking for a Barbie, like the other girls had, and she never saw them again. She wonders sometimes what Momma did with them- buried them, burned them or just tossed them into the dumpster. 

Another precious sliver of happiness carved out and tossed away, just like that,  _ bye bye, all gone _ . Anything that made her happy was taken away eventually.)

Lost in her thoughts, the seatbelt stays unfastened until Miss Desjardin leans over and does it for her.

‘There, honey.’

_ Honey.  _ She thinks of swarms of ants and buzzing, biting flies swarming over a honeypot. She thinks of flies and larvae swarming the bloody carrion carcass of her body.

‘We’ll have you home soon, I promise.’

A tear runs down her bloodiest cheek, over her lip. The salt mixes with the coppery fug that she can’t get rid of, even after the interminably long time she’d spent trying to wash the taste away.

(Her throat contracts along with her stomach but there’s nothing inside her to be thrown up.)

She wonders if she’ll ever taste anything else again.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW here for ablist language.
> 
> I was reading a memoir set in the 1970s in which a mostly non verbal autistic child is sewn up without anaesthetic at an American hospital because the doctor maintains that children 'like him' cannot feel pain. I have no idea how widespread the idea was but it wouldn't surprise me if it wasn't particular to that hospital, given the absolutely atrocious ablism in the health sector even now.
> 
> This, coupled with my own hatred of how Carrie is written in the text, made me decide to write this chapter as I did: I know I'm in no place to critique the actual author but I utterly despise how the text portrays Carrie as too stupid to really understand what's happening to her. I hate that her tormentors call her dumb and that the text itself agrees with them. I wanted to sort of argue with that a bit here.
> 
> Oh, and this update is gifted to Scarywhite for their much appreciated comments on the chapters so far!

Sue has never heard Carrie speak for so long with stuttering, and she’s definitely never heard her speak like this. Everyone knows Carrie White as the girl who has stammered and stumbled her way through teacher’s questions since Kindergarten, always looking up with that irritating rabbit-in-the-headlights look when her name is called, even when class has literally only just started and  _ good god, how has her attention wandered already? _

Sue’s also never heard Carrie articulate her own treatment before: sure,  _ she _ has thought about it endlessly, but she’s thought about it in her own words. Once or twice, she remembers, people at school had defended this or that prank by arguing that Carrie wouldn’t notice, that she wouldn’t get it, and Sue, to ease her own troubled conscience, had, she realises now, let herself believe it. 

There’s a sting to the realisation that it had been a comforting fantasy; Carrie had noticed every little thing all along.

She finds she’s surprised that Carrie is able to explain herself so fluently- and  _ that  _ surprises her too. She’s always been very careful to argue to everyone that Carrie is  _ just as smart as anyone else  _ after all. 

(When she was thirteen, she’d babysat her little cousin. She remembers holding their hands as they stirred gooey brownie mix round and round a yellow plastic bowl:  _ Wow, what a good baker you are! You’re so good! _

__ She isn’t sure why she thinks about that every time she jumps in to warmly defend Carrie’s intelligence.)

And still, Carrie keeps on talking.

***

Ms Desjardin had been the one to pull the knife away from her mother, although she hadn’t realised it at first. When she’d felt the blade pull back, the pressure of Mama’s arm over her windpipe lessen, she’d thought that Mama had changed her mind.

_ You’re my child, of course I wouldn’t hurt you really. _

The knife had been just an extension of how things normally went, just another way of Mama proving her love- a harsh punishment, a painful punishment, but a punishment given with the intent to teach. Mama’s fervent desire for her to learn to be better had pushed the knife into the soft, yielding flesh of her shoulder but it would only let it go so far.

(Mama, at least, never laughed at her when she cried- her punishments were meant to teach rather than to merely wound.)

When Mama had walked up behind her- after pressing her down on her knees to pray on the rough wooden floorboards- she’d waited for the familiar touch of Mama’s hands on her shoulders. Instead, some instinct had made her flinch away and all of a sudden, something flashes, Mama is on top of her, and they overbalance, toppling to the floor.

She sees the knife in Mama’s hand for a few seconds before her brain lets it recognise it for what it is.

_ Mama loves me, Mama is going to hurt me. _

The two truths had never rebelled against one another before, they’d always had equal weight in her mind.

But the knife presses perilously close to tipping the balance and it scares her, scares her enough that for a second she can feel her mind Flex out of instinct, before she clamps down on it.

No- she will not throw Mama off her, she will not force her away as if she is in a great danger.

_ (Mama loves me, Mama will hurt me.) _

_ (But she will stop. Eventually, she will stop.) _

_ (She always stops.) _

And then she does, and Carrie feels relief flood her along with the oxygen that she takes in in huge gasping gulps.

_ Of course Mama stopped, of course she stopped, of course she wouldn’t really- _

Then she sees Ms Desjardin’s face- panicked and pale- over Mama’s shoulder. Her mouth is working, she’s asking questions or perhaps shrieking them.

She wants to ask what she’s doing there but she can’t- she’s shaking so hard that her teeth clack together, and then the tip of her tongue gets caught. Her mouth fills with blood again; she twists her head to the side and throws up thin, bitter water.

Mama will be furious to know that Ms Desjardin is here, in their house, witnessing a punishment (she’ll also be furious that she threw up on the living room floor)- it shames her that Ms Desjardin is seeing it.

The surprise that she can still feel shame around this woman who has seen her stripped bare as a newborn, who has seen her bathed in the blood and reeking disdain of her peers, is strong.

_ What is she doing here, what is she- _

And then she sees Ms Desjardin’s hands tight around Mama’s wrists, she can see the vein in Mama’s forehead as she strains against her, her face contorted and her eyes wild, as she pulls and rages…….and then, slowly, almost gracefully, crumples like a rag doll to the floor.

It’s a stroke, Miss Desjardin tells her, after the ambulance is called, after what feels like hours sitting on the floor and watching Miss Desjardin manipulate Mama’s arms and legs, roll her over, tip her chip. 

She doesn’t offer to help, she can’t move, she can’t speak. Every breath feels like an assault- she wants to stop existing, and every rush of fresh life-giving air to her lungs is a cruel reminder that she can’t.

A stroke.

(When the paramedics rush in, they go to Carrie and Miss Desjardin has to redirect them. She stays, motionless, holding the folded towel against her shoulder like she has been told to.)

A stroke.

She thinks of Mama’s hands on hers, smoothing back her hair in the same way that Miss Desjardin is doing now, and wants to flinch away but she can’t. She can’t move. She’s wedged between Miss Desjardin and the wall in the crowded A&E, as they wait for her shoulder to be seen to.

_ (‘No, no, it’s not her, it’s her- I think she’s had a stroke, she-’ _

_ Miss Desjardin starts gabbling medical terms at the two men and they nod, never taking their eyes off Carrie. _

_ ‘She’s bleeding though-’ _

_ ‘The shoulder wound isn’t that deep-’ _

_ ‘The blood-’ _

_ ‘A….school prank, she’s in shock but she’s ok-’ _

_ They stare at her as they load Mama onto a stretcher and carry her out. Miss Desjardin gently urges her to her feet and into the ambulance where her shoulder is dabbed at. _

_ Mama moans; her eyes slide over Carrie like she’s a stranger. _

_ It hurts worse than the knife possibly could.) _

The A&E is noisy and crowded and she can sense people eyeing her uneasily, whispering about her, as they take in her bloodsoaked dress. Miss Desjardin’s wrap is gone from her shoulders; she doesn’t know where it is.

(She hopes Miss Desjardin won’t mind that she lost it.)

She can’t tell if the people are whispering about the blood, or because they’ve somehow heard about the prom events or if they’re whispering just because it’s  _ her,  _ old Praying Carrie and whispering about Scary White is as natural and inevitable as the tide coming in or the moon coming up.

Miss Desjardin says things about recovery and recuperation, about scarring and shock.

Carrie sits.

Her mouth tastes of blood and bile and fear.

She waits for Miss Desjardin to get irritated by her silence.

She leaves and comes back with a paper cup of bitter black coffee, into which she empties tiny sachets of sugar and little plastic tubs of milk.

Carrie sips it obediently when it’s put into her hand.

Now she can taste coffee, along with vomit.

(It does not help.)

When her name is called, she doesn’t even register: Miss Desjardin has to urge her up. The nurse asks if she’s a relative and Miss Desjardin says she’s her godmother. She doesn’t contradict the lie.

‘Carietta White? And you’re seventeen?’

It’s a question but she can’t even bring herself to nod. It’s as if she’s deep, deep down at the bottom of a black pit, and people are shouting questions and remarks high, high above her. Perhaps if she really tried, she could be heard- but really, it all feels very far away and irrelevant when you’re this far down.

‘Yes.’

Miss Desjardin answers for her and the nurse frowns.

‘Carrietta?’

‘She goes by Carrie.’

Miss Desjardin answers for her again.

‘Can she talk?’

‘She’s in shock.’

The nurse purses her lips.

‘Carrie?’

‘Ohuh?’

It’s the same imbecilic mumble that she can’t help when they call on her in class- it’s not intentional, she just spends so much time having to take her mind away from what is going on, she can’t help it drifting of its own accord. She thinks of a balloon, straining and drifting against fraying ropes- it floats away, until it’s jerked, clumsily, back to earth….

The nurse looks even more annoyed.

‘Can you tell me what happened to you?’

She blinks. What happened to her? Where to begin?

_ Well, when I started Kindergarten…. Well, when I was born…. When Mama…. _

‘She was stabbed-’ Miss Desjardin cuts in, her voice clipped. ‘It isn’t deep but-’

‘Are you a nurse?’

Miss Desjardin holds her gaze. ‘I’m a gym teacher. But I have First Aid training.’

The curl of the nurse’s lip tells everyone just what she thinks about  _ that _ .

‘Will you need an anaesthetic? It’s going to need stitches.’

‘Of course she will.’

‘I was asking  _ her. _ ’

‘Why do you need to ask?’ Miss Desjardin sounds angry. ‘Just numb it and-’

The nurse shrugs. ‘She might not even be able to feel it, this sort never do-’

‘Which sort are you referring to?’

The nurse doesn’t back down. ‘Mental defectives.’

Miss Desjardin stands up, in front of Carrie, and it’s funny- in all the years that she’s been backed into walls and lockers, all the years people have pressed up close, eyeball to eyeball, crushing her toes, their spit in her face, she’s never had anyone stand in front of her like this, protectively.

‘You will give her the anaesthetic or I will find us a nurse that will.’

‘It’s a waste of time, it-’

‘Do it!’

The nurse sighs, rolls her eyes and mutters something, but soon the throbbing in her shoulder is receding and the nurse is putting in the stitches. Miss Desjardin holds onto her hand while the nurse sews- her hand lies limp in her lap but Miss Desjardin’s cool fingers grip it anyway. She doesn’t realise that it means anything until the stitches are done and Miss Desjardin lets go. 

_ Wait, come back- _

‘You’re all done.’

‘What about painkillers for when this wears off?’

‘Tylenol will-’

‘She’ll need something stronger.’

‘I don’t think-’

‘Well I do.’

She’s used to be talked about as if she can’t hear, as if she can’t talk- but this is the first time she’s ever not minded. The steel in Miss Desjardin’s voice is comforting, it shields her. No one has ever spoken on her behalf like that before, and as she follows Miss Desjardin out of the cubicle, she holds the paper bag of medication as if it is something precious.

In a way, it is.

There’s more waiting, this time in a small white room with hard chairs. Her dress dries, stiff, rough, still slightly sticky, on her. Her hair is stuck together. Miss Desjardin apologises for not having thought to bring her something to change into. A thin cotton blanket, stamped with the name of the hospital is wrapped around her shoulders.

More coffee; a bag of stale chips from the vending machine that sit in her lap, untouched.

People, in uniform and out, come and go.

Words are thrown around-  _ psychosis, trauma. _

The word  _ prank _ comes up once or twice and then  _ assault _ takes its place.

‘I’m her godmother.’ There’s a nervy energy behind it that Carrie can almost feel- she wonders if this is how Mama can tell when she lies. ‘It’s why I was there, I was bringing her home after….this happened and-’ 

No one appears to pick up on it though, they nod, almost gratefully- it appears that the assertion has solved a problem.

‘So she can stay with you?’

‘Of course.’ Miss Desjardin glances at her sideways, anxious. ‘That’s alright with you, isn’t it Carrie?’

Does it matter? She supposes she needs to be somewhere.

Deep from the bottom of the pit, she nods an assent, and somehow, somehow they see.

  
  
  



	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huge huge huge thank you to the lovely people who reviewed oh my goodness! I can't say how much it means to me. Not much happens in this chapter so I'm afraid it might be quite dull- for my part, I just enjoyed writing it bc it was nice to sort of put the feeling of being in so much shock that you can't even process it onto paper.  
> As ever, thoughts are so appreciated!

It’s so late by the time Miss Desjardin stops the car for the last time that the edges of the dark are turning from black to the darkest grey.

It had been a mostly silent drive. Every so often, Miss Desjardin would look at her sideways and ask if she was sure she was ok to stay with her ‘until things were sorted out.’

The first time, she’d managed to muster up the energy to turn to look at her properly, to decipher the question, the way she’d learnt to. What was she really being asked? Was this like ‘ _ Weren’t you paying attention Carrie?’ _ ? Or more like ‘ _ What the fuck are you looking at, retard?’ _ ? Is she meant to say yes or no or nothing at all?

She settles for nothing- the safest option (usually), since it generally results in rolling eyes, twitching lips and irritation rather than anger.

Miss Desjardin doesn’t  _ look _ irritated (and Carrie has certainly seen her look irritated plenty of times before) but she does look worried and she keeps asking, although not in a way that seems to demand a response, more in a way that makes Carrie think she’s saying it not so much in the hope of an answer but so that she can reassure herself that the words have been said at all.

Maybe she just needs to fill up the air with words, the way some people do. Carrie isn’t one of those people and never has been, but she doesn’t mind the talking too much. Miss Desjardin’s voice isn’t particularly loud or harsh, so she just lets it wash over her, like the white noise on the radio that she’ll sometimes tune into when Mama is out just to hear the soothing buzz of nothingness.

They drive.

She realises after a while that she’s thirsty and the need feels obscene. Mama is ill, dying, dead, and she’s  _ thirsty _ . She’s covered in  _ blood _ and she’s  _ thirsty _ . She’s being driven into the unknown and she’s  _ thirsty. _

She feels sickened with herself- she can understand what Mama meant now, about the weakness of the flesh, not lust or pride but the unrelentingness of physical needs in times of crisis.

It’s alright- she’s been thirsty before, often- but it still feels wrong.

‘Here we are.’

Miss Desjardin unclips her own seatbelt, and then, after only a moment's hesitation, reaches over and presses something that makes Carrie’s own seatbelt pull back into place too.

She’s never been in a car before- she’s ridden the school bus but this is different. The belt had somehow gotten stuck when she’d tried to pull it- Miss Desjardin made it look easy but of course, it’s different for her. Anything that can be done clumsily inevitably  _ is. _

‘Come up, and I’ll show you where you’ll be sleeping.’

The house is at first too shadowy to make out details and then, when Miss Desjardin flicks a switch, too bright. She squinches her eyes half closed and follows Miss Desjardin up the stairs, along the corridor.

‘I have a spare room, so you’ll have some space. The bathroom is just here-’ They pause between two identical doors and Miss Desjardin nudges them both open- one shows white tiles, the other, a single bed with the bedspread pulled up and tucked tight under puffy pillows.

Miss Desjardin ushers them both into the bedroom, goes to sit on the bed, on the chintzy coverlet- and then stops. They’ve both sort of stopped seeing the bloodied rag (once the prettiest thing Carrie has ever owned) but now it seems very, very out of place and very, very dirty.

‘You….must want to get cleaned up.’

In the hall, she takes towels out of the airing cupboard and they both pretend not to notice when Carrie clutches them instinctively against her stomach, turning the white terrycloth rusty. In the bathroom, Miss Desjardin opens her mouth like she’s going to start explaining things, and then seems to think better of it- she leans in, turns on the shower herself and adjusts the temperature. 

‘Leave your- things in the sink.’ She’s not really looking at Carrie when she says it but that’s ok. ‘I’ll- ah I’ll go and see what I can find for you to wear. I’ll leave it outside the door for you, ok?’

Carrie blinks at her, and makes herself nod.

Miss Desjardin squeezes her hand- one of the few bits of her washed clean under the school sinks and leaves; after a minute, Carrie climbs under the warm spray.

She’s still dressed but it doesn’t matter. She won’t be wearing this dress again.

*

Time washes over her like the water- which after a while turns cool and then cold. The cold is nice- it numbs her, her burning shoulder and her burning eyes.

Eventually, the water turns off; Miss Desjardin is standing over her, looking sad.

‘Come on.’

She reaches out a hand- and after a while Carrie takes it and lets herself be hauled to her feet. The water running in rivulets down her legs and neck and dripping from the hem of her still stained dress is clean, at least.

They don’t talk- Miss Desjardin wraps a towel- a clean one, not one of the ones she ruined- around her shoulders and walks her back to the bedroom, then lays some clothes on the bed.

‘Do you- need some help?’

She sounds uncomfortable- Carrie can feel, behind everything, the embarrassment that should be there but she can’t really feel it. She can’t really feel anything. 

She can still manage some things herself though, so with a shake of her head, she lets the towel slide off her shoulders and starts to tug down the zip. She’d zipped herself into this dress feeling like an entirely different person and now, zipping herself out of it, it’s like she’s removing that self, the self that maybe thought she still had a chance at normality. 

(She won’t make that mistake again.)

Miss Desjardin absents herself.

It takes her a while to dry off and change into the unfamiliar pajamas. They smell of fabric softener and they are most definitely not homemade. Her fingers feel slow and fumbling- she is moving as if through syrup but it doesn’t matter, she realises. It can’t matter- she doesn’t have Mama to be on time for anymore, classes are over and what else is there?

The thought sends her numb mind pinwheeling with despair but she can’t cry. Having a direction helps but once she’s changed, she can’t think of what to do next, so she just sits on the edge of the bed, running her fingers over the ruffle stitched around the edge of the bedspread. This, like the pajamas, like everything else in this house is, she realises, stitched by machine. Funny that she used to long for store bought clothes- now, without the weight of human labour, they feel flimsy and insubstantial.

There’s a tap on the door and Miss Desjardin comes back in. She doesn’t look like herself- her hair is ruffled, her eyes shadowed. Her face is drawn. She feels sorry that she’s made Miss Desjardin look like that.

_ If only I hadn’t gone, Mama would still be alright. _

The thought stabs at her, hard and unexpected like a punch from behind, tripping over an unexpected foot. They called her Prayin’ Carrie and Scary White: will they now call her  _ mother-killer _ ? 

(She isn’t dead. Miss Desjardin had repeated that to her lots of times in the hospital, as if that would soften the rest of the news. As if that would help gloss over her memory of the knife.)

Miss Desjardin sits next to her on the bed and for a while, they don’t talk. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Miss Desjardin’s fingers twisting together.

‘You must be tired.’

There’s a silence. Part of her feels like she could sleep forever, part of her feels like she’ll never sleep again.

The silence stretches out, longer and longer and then there’s a sniff and with dull surprise, she realises Miss Desjardin is crying.

‘I’m sorry- I’m sorry, I’m sorry-’ She presses her fingers to her eyes, as if she’s pushing the tears back, the way she imagines the sort of pretty girls who wear eye makeup do and breathes deeply. ‘I’m just...I’m so sorry. That all this has happened to you. I keep on thinking….’ 

Then she breaks off. ‘It doesn’t matter. You’re what matters.’ 

She shifts so that she’s looking Carrie in the eye, and her hands take Carrie’s again. It’s funny- she’s been touched more in the last eight hours than she has been by anyone other than Mama in her entire life.

‘I know I can’t make it better. I can’t imagine what you’re feeling now. But I promise that you’re safe here.’

There’s another pause- should she say  _ yes _ or  _ thank you _ ?

(She doesn’t say either.)

‘Do you want to talk about it? Do you want to talk about what happened?’

This definitely does require an answer- she gives the little twitch of the shoulders and Miss Desjardin nods.

‘Ok. I’m here if you change your mind. Are you hungry?’

She isn’t- the pain pills don’t need to be taken with food, so after some coaxing, Miss Desjardin gives in. She puts the pill bag next to the glass of water on the nightstand- the water wasn’t there before she realises. 

Miss Desjardin must have fetched it for her while she was sitting on the floor of the woman’s shower and- in a sort of sick inversion of one of her childhood fears- thinking about how much she would like to be washed down the drain along with the filth and ruin of the day.

‘I think the best thing now would be to get some sleep and we can try and sort things out a bit more in the morning, ok?’

She doesn’t wait for the nod of assent this time, just gets up and gives Carrie her hand, makes her stand up and leads her into the hall.

‘My room is just across the hall, see? This door here. If you need anything at all- if your shoulder gets worse, if you need something, if you just need some company- I want you to come and get me, ok? I’m a light sleeper- just knock and I’ll hear you. Ok?’

Another nod. She wonders if she’ll ever need to talk again. Maybe with Mama gone, there’s nothing left to say. There’s no one to hear, after all.

In the spareroom, Miss Desjardin pulls back the duvet, folds the bedspread, draws the curtains and then waits until she’s under the covers.

‘Is your shoulder still hurting?’

A shake of the head.

‘Do you need anything else?’

Another shake.

‘If you do get hungry, the kitchen is just downstairs- help yourself to anything you want, ok?’

A nod.

Miss Desjardin’s hand upon her hair is very gentle, like she’s worried about hurting her.

‘Try to sleep.’

In the doorway, she pauses and turns back.

‘Oh and Carrie? You don’t need to call me Miss Desjardin while you’re here, unless you want to. You can call me Rita. If you like.’

(If she had hoped that the permission would gain a verbal response, she was wrong. Carrie doesn’t blame her. Lots of teachers in the past have tried their own little gambits- sticky stars that she’d had to peel off her jumper before going home, special privileges offered for every time she spoke unprompted. Never redeemed, they had still made the other children stare at her with undisguised resentment.)

‘Goodnight Carrie.’

And just like that, she is left alone.

*

She’s wished for a pillow for years but actually having it, it turns out, is uncomfortable.

It’s too soft under her head and her neck feels cricked so she lays it carefully on the floor. She hopes Miss Desjardin won’t mind.

It isn’t enough though.

She looks around the room- it’s a plain room but still more luxurious than anything she’s known before. It’s warmer than home too, but she’s still cold.

Then she sees the door of the walk-in closet. The sight of it sparks something inside her and for the first time in her life, she goes to the door of the closet willingly.

_ Can you see me Mama? Can you sense, in your hospital bed, with the tubes snaking over and around you? I’m doing what you would want. _

It feels right somehow.

_ Mama, I should have listened to you. I was wrong. _

Folding herself up on the carpet is comfortingly, familiarly uncomfortable. If she squeezes her eyes shut and imagines hard enough, she can imagine Mama on the other side of the door. She falls asleep to the sound of her mothers breathing.

*

_ She’s still in the closet; it must have been bad if Mama has made her sleep in it. Her shoulder hurts, Mama must have grabbed it, or maybe she hit it against the door frame as she was forced in or maybe- _

_ Her head hurts, but that’s normal, and she’s shivering, but that’s normal too. _

_ It’s also completely dark- the candles are gone, the Jesus on the wall is gone, even the chink of light that usually shows around the door. It’s a suffocating sort of darkness, the kind that you can feel, like black velvet, against your face and she isn’t used to it. _

_ Have they been removed as some sort of extra punishment? She can’t remember, everything is blurry, but the panic is sharp and real, as it is every time. _

_ Her first blow against the door lands clumsily, only the side of her hand catches the wood, it makes hardly any noise at all. Her second one is harder but she can no more resist the urge to scratch on the door and beg for release than she can stop breathing: she can restrain herself for moments, even minutes at a time but it’s only a pause before the need breaks free, forces air into her lungs, forces her hand against the wood. The struggle for freedom when in a small dark place isn’t even a choice, she knows- it can’t be tamed by reason or punishment, it exists within her in some deep primal place. _

_ She hits the door again and again, a thin keening wail in her ears that she knows logically must be her own voice but logic is very far away when you’re in the Closet and it’s dark and Mama isn’t responding even with scripture which she knows means that she’s going to be there for a long, long time, and you can’t breathe, you can’t breathecan’tbreathecan’tbreathe- _

The door is wrenched open, there’s a flood of light and she collapses forwards forwards, palms grazing the carpet. 

‘Carrie, what on earth were you doing in there?’ Miss Desjardin’s face hovers in front of her, creased from sleep and it’s jarring enough that everything rushes back to her: the unfamiliar room, the nurses cold hand upon her arm, Mama on the floor, the knife in Mama’s hand and the bloodthebloodtheblood-

Miss Desjardin’s hands grip her upper arms but she can’t answer, she can’t  _ breath _ .

‘Carrie!’ Miss Desjardin’s voice cuts through the panic. She sounds urgent- it’s her coach's voice- but not angry. ‘You need to slow down your breathing.’ 

She tries to squirm away from Miss Desjardin’s hands but she can’t. 

‘You need to slow it down,’ she repeats. ‘In. And out. And in, and out. Come on, Carrie. You need to work with me here. You can do it.’

It’s how she sounded when she’d told Carrie that she definitely could climb up the ropes in the gym. (She hadn’t been able to then either.)

‘You can do it,’ Miss Desjardin repeats, firmly. ‘Match your breathing to mine, come on.’

She doesn’t believe her but it’s too hard to not do what she’s told. Slowly, slowly, she holds each breath a little longer before letting it out; it makes her chest burn.

‘Good.’ Miss Desjardin is still holding her shoulders, but more gently now. ‘Good, keep going. That’s it.’

Slowly, slowly the waves of panic begin to inch back. 

*

‘So what on earth were you doing in there?’

Miss Desjardin sets two steaming mugs on the bedside table- the smell is unfamiliar and slightly bitter- and perches herself on the edge of the mattress. Carrie awkwardly tries to make space for her but it’s hard to move too much- the hot water bottle on her feet, the blanket around her shoulders and the covers drawn up over her keep her in place.

‘Did the door get stuck?’

She doesn’t sound angry, just concerned and confused, despite being woken up again so soon.

‘N-no.’

It’s the first thing she’s said out loud in hours- her voice cracks but it’s still something. It’s apparently not enough though either- Miss Desjardin is looking at her expectantly.

‘What happened?’

She should lie, she should have a better explanation, but she’s never been good at explaining herself so the unembellished lumpen facts are dragged from her, as they always are.

_ No, I don’t have anything nicer to wear- _

_ Yes, that’s where I live- _

_ Yes, she is my mother- _

‘I was asleep. And then I woke up.’

‘Did you sleepwalk?’

‘No. I was awake when I went inside.’

This is usually the point where people start rolling their eyes, sighing and snapping but Miss Desjardin is patient, gentle, as if she’s getting proper answers.

‘Why did you go inside?’

The answer chokes her- not because she’s embarrassed but because she can’t explain without talking about Mama and doing that makes her throat tighten with tears.

‘Ok, it’s ok.’ Miss Desjardin hands her her mug and then a tissue is pressed into her free hand and she dabs and sips. ‘Did the door get stuck?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I didn’t try the door.’

‘Why not?’

‘It was always locked.’

‘When? At school?’ Her eyes are narrowing, as if she’s thinking of storming all the way back to school to punish this new cruelty-

(Thinking about school is a mistake, it turns out. Her mind freezes for a moment, glitches; like a heavy door slammed shut, she has to block the thought out quickly-

When she’s back to herself, Miss Desjardin is looking even more worried but somehow still, still not impatient.)

‘At home.’ She knows, faintly, that she should lie, but she can’t- she’s never been good at it and she’s tired, she’s so tired-

Miss Desjardin’s eyes widen and she’s used to that, the moment of confusion, disgust, of pulling back. The tears rise up again- it blurs the look of disdain that she’s so used to.

‘Oh honey.’

She feels a sob rise in her throat and she doesn’t even know if it’s for Mama or for herself.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Tell you what?’

There’s a pause and Miss Desjardin looks at her, searchingly, for a long moment….and then her gaze drops.

‘Never mind.’ She takes her own mug. ‘It’s camomile tea with honey. I thought it might help you sleep.’

‘....Thank you.’

She realises, distantly, that she hasn’t said it until now and that she probably should have done. Miss Desjardin smiles.

‘You’re welcome.’

They sip their tea in silence and after a while, Miss Desjardin’s arm ends up around her shoulders. After an even longer while, she finds she’s actually leaning into her. She’s warm.

Miss Desjardin’s hand moves gently up and down her upper arm and it’s not uncomfortable enough that she needs to move away. It actually starts to feel nice after a while.

They don’t talk.

(It’s a relief. She doesn’t have anything she wants to say.)

After a while, the birds start to sing. It’s a thin, barely-there sound, but it’s still there.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
